Audio — KJR appearance talking Seahawks and expectations

As you can hear, we decided that the last Seattle-area team that might have had expectations this high was the 1991 Huskies, who had most of the key players returning from a 10-2 team that had won the Rose Bowl the year before and pretty much manhandled everyone in the Pac-10 other than a still-stupefying home loss to UCLA in the second-to-last game of the season. Even at that, though, that UW team entered the season with one big question mark after quarterback Mark Brunell hurt his knee in the spring and the Huskies had to go with untested Billy Joe Hobert.

You could probably argue that some of the 1990’s era Sonics’ teams had similar expectations, though even then there were teams such as Phoenix and Houston in Seattle’s own conference that had accomplished more (true — you could argue that’s also sort of like the 49ers this year). And you could also throw the 78-79-80 Sonics into that mix, as well, of teams that had legitimate championship-level expectations.

You could also maybe argue some of the ’80s era Seahawks teams had similar expectations — I actually plan on a more exhaustive story on this topic at some point, so far now I’m throwing this out there largely as a discussion point based on the radio interview.

Obviously, accurately defining the level of expectations for different teams over different eras is pretty difficult.

But I think it’s safe to conclude the expectations for this Seahawks team are right in the ballpark with those of any other Seattle athletic team over the last 30-40 years